Wireless technology permits different devices to communicate without being hard wired to one another. Most notably, this ability has manifested itself in wireless internet and other data communications systems. Presently, there are a number of different wireless protocol stacks including Bluetooth®, ANT, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee which all operate in the 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band of the radio frequency spectrum. The ISM bands were typically reserved for industrial, scientific, and medical purposes (i.e. non telecommunication). However, in recent years there has been a large number of short range, low power communication systems existing within those bands.
The methodology by which wireless devices communicate can vary by device or by type of communication. For example, Bluetooth® enabled devices can pair by either legacy pairing (requiring the same PIN from each device) or secure simple pairing (a form of public key cryptography). This is commonly seen when pairing a wireless Bluetooth® enabled headset or keyboard to a Bluetooth® enabled smart phone or tablet. The prevalence of wireless communication in today's society brings about many niche markets for its use and exploitation. However, many wireless communication methods have shortcomings with relation to security concerns and various functionalities. Additionally, there is a need for a wireless pairing that enables downstream communication automatically, without user inputs. Such a wireless pairing system can be used to create large wireless groups in a short amount of time that share a common bond. Further, this interaction can be expanded upon by providing devices capable of synchronizing certain outputs and further interacting with one another within a similar short amount of time.
Review of Related Technology:
U.S. Pat. No. 8,437,474 discloses a system comprised of a user and a group, wherein the group is comprised of a group leader and a group of M members where M is equal to or greater than one. The group leader generates a group public key and a group leader “master” private key. The group leader creates a personalized watermarked or decryption key, also referred to as an individual private key, for each group member. The individual private key uniquely identifies each group member. The group leader distributes the individual private keys to each of the group members. Each group member receives from a user a message encrypted using the group public key. Each of the group members uses its individual private key to decrypt the encrypted message sent by the user to the group.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,325,020 discloses methods and apparatus for uniquely identifying wireless devices in close physical proximity. When two wireless devices are brought into close proximity, one of the devices displays an optical indicator, such as a light pattern. This device then sends messages to other devices which are within wireless range to cause them to use any light sensor to detect a signal. In an embodiment, the light sensor is a camera and the detected signal is an image captured by the camera. Each device then sends data identifying what was detected back to the device displaying the pattern. By analyzing this data, the first device can determine which other device detected the indicator that it displayed and therefore determine that this device is within close physical proximity. In an example, the first device is an interactive surface arranged to identify the wireless addresses of devices which are placed on the surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,219,135 discloses a method for establishing a communication network that connects a group or community of users using wireless equipments according to their defined interests. These equipments are preferentially portable, low cost, and user-friendly, where each equipment must be configurable using its user's profile, which contains a small amount of the user's personal data, namely the miniprofile. The method uses a collection of such miniprofiles to transparently set a communication network among the associate users to establish a virtual community. In addition, each profile will contain further information on user's interests, which the method will propagate across the communication network to the established virtual community in a way that their members will be able to form groups based on common interests while allowing for interaction among their members. The user profile can be set identifiable or anonymous, may or not be shareable in relation to the other members of a group. The method is distributed, and supports spontaneous and volatile communication networks, preferentially.
Various devices are known in the art. However, their structure and means of operation are substantially different from the present disclosure. The devices typically require the input of a variety of data including personal information. The related devices also use inferior methodology such as cameras, which may pose security issues. The other inventions also fail to solve all the problems taught by the present disclosure. The current disclosure provides for automatic downstream pairing for devices sharing common data identifiers and methods to synchronize device outputs. At least one embodiment of this invention is presented in the drawings below and will be described in more detail herein.